No Instagram Hipster Left Behind

I once overheard a high school art teacher laughing with a friend about how her students would try to hand in blurry photos for their assignments. "They're not artsy and cool. They're out of focus!," she'd chastise them. I could have interrupted with a rant about how shallow depth of field, contrast in focus, bokeh, and motion blur often serve as narrative elements capable of communicating more about a moment than whatever happened to be in front of your iPhone at the time. I might have further added that a person should never let a little soot or chalk prove cause enough to condemn an otherwise interesting image. Instead, I bit my tongue, because what I really wanted to say was, "That's bullshit. Out of focus photographs are artsy and cool. And you're both a couple of squares."